African Americans protest Bahati’s US tour to promote “kill the gays” in Uganda

Bishop Zachary Jones (L) Pastor Joseph Tolton(C) Frank Mugishi(R) Photo Credit: Ocean Morisset

By Nathan James

GBM News Correspondent

As Ugandan Member of Parliament David Bahati, the sponsor of a Draconian new bill making homosexuality a capital offense in his country, came to the United States this past week, seeking support for the legislation, an “Emergency Town Hall Meeting” was held Saturday, in New York City. Organized by the Black Faith Alliance for Global LGBT Justice, the event at Rehoboth Temple Christ Consciousness Church in Harlem featured a keynote address from Frank Mugishi, of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). At issue was the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Act, whose provisions include life imprisonment for anyone found guilty of homosexual relations, and execution for anyone having previous convictions for homosexuality, is HIV-positive, or has gay sexual relations with a person under 18. In addition, the bill also makes failure to report a “known homosexual” to the authorities a crime, punishable by 7 years in prison, and creates an extradition process for Ugandans who are caught having gay relationships anywhere in the world. This extraordinarily harsh legislation against gays also highlighted, according to the meeting’s organizers, the involvement of the Christian Right here in the United States in the bill’s development.

Citing the “continued efforts of the religious right in turning blacks and gays against each other”, Bishop Zachary Jones of the Unity Fellowship Church spoke of how the Christian right in the US was heavily engaged in California’s Proposition 8, which overturned gay marriage in that state, and on the use of Uganda as a “lab” in which the effects of anti-gay legislation could be observed. “The religious right,” Jones stated, “Is using Africans as pawns in a global chess game.” Jones was joined at the pulpit by Pastor Joseph Tolton, Rehoboth’s own presiding cleric, who read out the “call to action” on Uganda, imploring the United Nations and the US State Department to make decisive moves to address the plight of Uganda’s gays. Tolton cited a right-wing, Republican-based, American evangelical group, “The Family” with “exporting hatred to Africa, with a direct threat to the LGBT community in Uganda, by funding and sponsoring the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.” Tolton linked the situation in Uganda with American gays, saying, “We know that the freedom of our brothers and sisters in Uganda is clearly connected to our freedom here at home in the United States.” Pastor Tolton was followed by Frank Mugishi, who recounted in chilling detail the suffering of gays and lesbians in his home country.

Frank Mugishi, of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) Photo Credit: Ocean Morisset

Mugishi described forced hiding for gays and lesbians, “corrective rape” programs for lesbians, and the outright publication of the names and hometowns of gays and lesbians in local newspapers, creating a mob atmosphere in which gays feared being hunted down and beaten or killed. Mugishi stated that Uganda was “determined” to use all possible means to remove gays from its society, and the Anti-Homosexuality Act enjoyed broad public support. Mugishi and his organization have been operating underground in Uganda, and with the possible passage of Bahati’s bill, feared a catastrophic wave of anti-gay killings. GBM News asked Mugishi about the extradition clause in the Anti-Homosexuality Act. Mugishi confirmed that this would leave Uganda’s gays “little chance of escape”.

In a televised interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, MP Bahati cited “God’s Law” as justification for the proposed bill, and told viewers that “children were being recruited into homosexuality” by gay men in Uganda. When pressed to provide evidence of his claims, Bahati demurred, repeating only that “homosexuality is not of [Ugandan] culture.” While in Washington, Bahati stayed at a residence on C Street, also shared by numerous Republican members of Congress, and found receptive ears in several right-wing Christian organizations for his rhetoric. In Uganda, Bahati has gained the support of powerful allies such as Pastor Martin Ssempa, who showed scatological pornography as his “example” of gay sexual practices, and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has said he will not oppose the bill if it passes Parliament. Bahati himself, in the documentary Missionaries of Hate, aired last summer on Current TV, stated that he would not hesitate to have his own daughter put to death under the law he authored, if she were found to be a lesbian.

In final statements at the Town Hall meeting, Pastor Tolton called upon all closeted gays and lesbians to “come out, wherever you are”, because “now is the time”. He urged gays of color to engage in a “sustained response” to homophobia, decrying the “spiritual colonialism” of the “religious right”. The approximately fifty attendees were brought to the pulpit as a show of unity, singing We Shall Overcome, recalling the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s. An appeal was made for donations to help Mugishi spread his message about the Ugandan situation, and to support Uganda’s imperiled gay population. Whatever lies ahead for Uganda’s gays in the coming months, it was clear that this critical, complex issue involving the efforts of a modern state government to exterminate a minority within its population, will continue to call to the hearts and minds of the LGBT community the world over.

The Global Justice Institute, GLAAD, GLO TV Network, GayByGod.net, The Fellowship, MCC New York & Rehoboth Temple join efforts to mobilize the community.

CALL TO ACTION

The Christian Right is Killing BLACK Gay People in Uganda

The Human Rights THREAT in Uganda effects ALL OF US

Rachel Maddow- -Kill the gays- bills U.S. supporters

An Attack On Us All by Nathan James

This past Wednesday morning, employees of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York's Greenwich Village arrived for work and were met by a frightening sight.  A Rainbow Flag outside the building had been set of fire during the night.  Although surveillance cameras recorded the attack, and the NYPD's detectives are investigating, I was still deeply disturbed when I learned of this incident.  This ws not just an attack on one of our most precious institutions, this was an attack against us all.  This was a person or persons so filled with anger and hatred towards us, that they came in the night with fire and venom.  While we slept, or sang, or worked, or even made love, the flames of bigotry arose to burn us all.  We already walk in fear during the ordinary course of our lives; we never know if the price we might pay for being out and proud will be a beating, unemployment, eviction, ostracism, or even death.  We walk the streets of our cities and towns, wondering when we'll hear the mocking voice of hatred: will it be in church, as the pastor demonizes us from his pulpit?  Will it be on television, when a commentator says we are undeserving of basic human rights?  Will it be in our schools, when administrators deny us participation in the gatherings of our classmates?

All these things and more, we think about whenever we assess who we are as members of the LGBT community.  But to see a place like the LGBT Center, a place of our own, where we are free to express who we are in safety and comfort, attacked like this, is to witness hatred on a whole new plane.  Those who came in the night with fire in their hands and hearts, knew full well the symbolism and meaning of their acts.  By their attack they say "This is what we want to do to you."   Their message is very clear.  They came to take away any illusion that by merely entering a building we can delude ourselves into believing we are safe from the fears and attitudes of a very homophobic society.  That our place of peaceful assembly and culture was attacked with violence tells us how deeply held the hatred is.  When we talk about the progress we've made as a community--passage of same-sex marriage laws, achieving visitation rights in hospitals, the decriminalization of homosexuality--we also need to remember that there are those who will try to hurt us for that progress.

The attack on the LGBT Center was, by extension, an attack on all of our progress, all of our hopes, all of our dreams.  That's why we, as a dynamic, complex, diverse, and beautiful culture need to address this evil act by reaffirming ourselves.  Our community makes priceless contributions to society every day, even as its more hateful elements try to burn us back into the closet.  I well remember being told over and over again, how I was "inappropriate", "socially unacceptable", "deviant", and many other hurtful labels.  It surely kept me from living as the person I truly was, for a very long time.  Fear of social sanctions prevented me and countless others from realizing their total selves, and the flag-burning at the Center is naught but an attempt to reassert that old fear in all of us.  We cannot fall back, we cannot run, we cannot hide, though they approach us with fire.  We may and must respond by expressing ourselves as human beings, as we are, for all to see.  We cannot let the flames of hatred burn our beautiful village down.